ANEURIN, a British (Welsh) bard, author of the Gododin, flourished at the beginning of the 7th century. He is said to have been the son of Caw-ab-Geraint, a chief of the Gododin, who had their home on the sea-coast to the south of the Firth of Forth. In some of the mss. which give the names of Caw's sons, the name of Gildas appears, but where the name of Aneurin appears that of Gildas does not. It has therefore been assumed that the British historian Gildas and the bard Aneurin were one and the same person, though the internal evidence of their works appears to confute this. Thomas Stephens, the editor and trans lator of the Gododin epic, thinks that Aneurin may have been a son of Gildas.
Aneurin seems to have studied at St. Cadoc's College, Llan carvan, and to have acted both as priest and bard at the Battle of Cattraeth described in his epic. This fight is identified by Stephens with the battle of Degstan, assigned by the Saxon Chronicle to the year 603. Aneurin was taken prisoner after the battle. On his release he returned to Wales and became a friend of Taliesin. In his old age he returned to the north and lived with his brother in Galloway. The Gododin is vague in its lan guage and in its description of events. It relates the defeat of the Britons of Strathclyde at the hands of the Saxon invader at the battle of Cattraeth.
See the versions of the Gododin in Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales (1866), and in the edition by Thomas Stephens published by the Cymmrodorion Society (1888).